VINEYARD & CAFE
 
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Baptism of fire and frost

Nelson | Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Growing a crop is always a gamble, with nature setting the rules. Moutere Hills Vineyard and Winery has been on the receiving end, and it's had the added hurdle of a winery fire. Anne Hardie talks with the winemaker about the promising vintage now in the tanks of its new winery.

After trial by fire and frost, luck turned for Moutere Hills Vineyard and Winery when the last of the 2008 harvest was plucked from the vines - just ahead of a downpour that drenched the region.

In so many other years, the harvest would have only just begun and rain of that magnitude would have been devastating to the vintage.

So winemaker Jasper Raats is thanking his lucky stars. South African-born Raats joined the Upper Moutere vineyard's owners, John and Ali Tocker, two years ago to oversee the winemaking process, only to lose the first vintage in a fire that destroyed the winery, taking with it wines from 2005 and even 2004 that were still to be released on the market.

"It was full to the brim with our '06 wines and we were just gearing up for the bottling," he recalls. "And then the fire started and burnt everything. It was particularly sad because it was my first vintage here and it was a fantastic year."

The upside of the fire was replacing the cramped - albeit cute - old winery with an updated version that has room to move.

"It was a cute little winery, but we had tanks in every corner and the little barrel room was just chocker. So (the fire) did give us a chance to rebuild and do something better than what we had; something that would give us scope to expand."

As well as losing the much-anticipated wine in the fire, the whole operation had to be moved to another winery while they waited for a new one to be built at Moutere Hills.

"We ended up taking a few little tanks around to Woollaston Estates and they lived with us squatting in their winery. At the end of fermentation, we brought all the wine back here, which was quite an ordeal because we had wines in tanks. So we had to put the wine into transport tanks and rush the empty tanks here, bolt them in and transfer the wine into it," Raats says.

"It took about two weeks to finally get everything over here.
"We were talking at one point about calling the 2007 wines the phoenix vintage, like the phantom bird rising from the ashes. It was great when it all went into bottles."

Understandably, Raats was looking forward to an easier vintage this time around, but then an unseasonal frost in October hit the chardonnay and pinot noir grapes at a crucial time, destroying about two-thirds of the chardonnay production and half that of the pinot noir.

"We were thinking, 'Is there anything else that can happen?'. But ends good, all good! It's been a very warm summer - long sunny days and warm, balmy evenings. That expedites the ripening, so your flavours evolve much quicker.

"You get full ripeness at an earlier date, which saved us because if we were picking later, the rain would have been devastating. The grapes soak up the water, tear, and infection gets in.

"But we were bringing in the last grapes as it started to rain. When you're in agriculture, it keeps you humble because there's so much out of your control."

To cover for the shortfall in production caused by the October frost, Raats scouted for grapes around the Moutere hills and discovered numerous small plots growing on the clay hillsides.

"That's one of the allures of Nelson as a region. You have all these little vineyards scattered all over the show, and there are some real gems.

"There's these nuances of differences between them, so it was an interesting exercise for me to search for grapes."

Besides the chardonnay and pinot noir, Raats will also produce a sauvignon blanc, a pinot gris, a rose from cabernet sauvignon and merlot, and a wine labelled Sarau (after Upper Moutere's original German name) that will blend four white varieties.

Helping him with the winemaking process this year is South African trainee winemaker Nadia Barnard, who has been jumping from vintage to vintage around the globe to gather experience. From a vintage in South Africa, she travelled to South Australia for another, then to Burgundy in France, back to South Africa and now Upper Moutere.

"I've been trying to do three vintages in a year, though I'm going to go for a permanent job now because it gets so exhausting," she says.

In Burgundy's Chablis, she worked solely with chardonnay and the actual harvest lasted just two weeks. In true French style, food and wine were an integral part of the work day and not to be rushed.

"Every day, you stop at 12 for an hour and a half, no matter what you are doing. It's really, really nice and you have people serve you four courses every day, and every single day we had wine with our lunch. And then they expect you to go back and work!"

Barnard chose Nelson as an "up-and-coming" wine region, and at Moutere Hills she's relishing working in a small boutique winery for three to four months. It has also given her the chance to work with pinot gris for the first time.

"The whole point is to learn something, and I will go back and plant pinot gris if I get the chance."

In the meantime, there's a myriad of tasks to carry out under Raats' guidance as each wine ferments in its tank. Right now, they taste like scrummy fruit juices, but Raats is hoping for wines that reflect the balmy summer days the grapes basked in.